Christmas and Trains

[wm3798]

In November, It’s the Crunch of Leaves, the Smell of Gravy, and Trains!

When I was a kid growing up in a Baltimore rowhouse, there were many things to anticipate with the coming of the holiday season.  The cooler weather brought the colorful leaves on the trees to be sure, but just as predictable were the appearance of spectacular window displays at the big department stores downtown, and the Christmas Train Gardens at fire stations all over town.

For me, the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving always meant a very special time was just around the corner.  I recall coming in the back door from Sunday School each week, and looking up as we passed through the laundry room.  Usually, there were two pieces of heavy plywood suspended there, but with the coming of November, I knew that soon they would be taken down.  Those sheets of plywood were the foundation of our own Christmas Garden.

Then one magical Sunday, we’d come home, the plywood would be gone from the ceiling, and the smell of old cork and dried up lichen (a natural growth that would be dyed green and used for trees and bushes) would fill the air.  The Christmas Garden would soon be open for its annual run!

Baltimore is a city that has strong roots in German tradition.  At the turn of the last century, a narrow vote in the City Council determined that the business would be conducted in English, and not German, although a majority of citizens at that time were of Teutonic heritage.  One of those traditions, was the Christmas Garden.  Germans have long undertaken the display of miniature villages, usually surrounding a Nativity crèche.  In later years, the advent of electric lights and motorized model trains added a merry twinkle and clatter to the displays.

My dad would pile us in the car and we would make the circuit to the various fire stations that still had train gardens set up…  Dundalk, Towson and Cross Country Boulevard near Mount Washington were favorites.  We’d stand in line, then go through the door into a darkened engine bay, the smell of ozone hanging in the air from the big Lionel trains that sparked and rattled around the set up.


It was a feast for the eyes.  Bright spotlights lit up the train garden like a Broadway stage.  Invariably there’d be a large white mountain with a cleverly motorized belt that pulled a parade of skiers from top to bottom.  And since the set up was hosted by the fire department, there would also be a building that was fully involved, with cotton smoke billowing from the roof, and a flickering orange light raging inside.  In the days before political correctness became rampant, there would be a Nativity scene.

Then the best part…  The bright spotlights would dim, giving way to a night scene dominated by the glow of black lights overhead.  First we would marvel at how our white shirts, shoe laces and jacket trims would glow, but only for a moment.  We were quickly distracted by the constellation of tiny lights that lined the model streets, and glimmered warmly from the windows of the tiny shops and cottages.  The building fire suddenly turned into a carnival of blinking lights, the result of probably hundreds of hours put in by some fireman with a box of Corgis and Tonkas, a tiny drill and a bunch of light bulbs and relay circuits.  (These were the days before printed circuits and LED’s)

Suddenly a Lionel passenger train would roar past.  Now, when you’re five or six years old, that train was pretty much right at eye level.  The noise, the sparks and the speed were as exhilarating as if you were standing on the platform at New Carrollton or Edgewood when the Amtrak Acella blasts by at 110 mph.  And who can forget those black silhouettes of the passengers in the windows?  The light inside the cars made them look like they were on some bizarre thrill ride, where people are plastered against the windows by centrifugal force!

After we dropped our coins in the wishing well near the exit, we’d head back to the house.  With the plywood “train boards,” as Mom called them, set up on there saw horses, we would begin unpacking the boxes full of houses, autos and other scenery details that Dad had collected over the years.  Our set up was HO scale, smaller than the traditional Lionels, and more compatible with our extensive inventory of Hot Wheel cars.

My brother would carefully unwrap the trains, and place them on the three loops of track, while Dad and I would build the big city and the outlying suburbs.  (This was my first real experience with Urban Planning!).  In later years we added a slot car track, which my brother cleverly re-wired so it would accommodate two way traffic.

Pepper wasn't very interested in trains. I'm hoping I can churn up more photos of this Christmas garden. We set it up every year we lived in a row house in Baltimore. You can see it was a pretty busy place!

And of course, there were the lights.  Inspired by the fire house displays, my brother concocted a series of circuits so that as the overhead lights dimmed, the streetlights would come on, then this group of houses would light up, then that.  Some of the slot cars even had headlights.

It was that magical transition from day to night that captured my imagination, and set me on a path to have an interest in model railroading as a life-long hobby.  The soft glow of the lights in the houses, the reflection of a scale streetlight on the windshield of a Match Box car parked beneath it, and the wash of light that came from the headlamp of a moving train gave me an appreciation of the beauty of every day things.  The works of Edward Hopper, especially his painting “The Night Hawks” readily come to mind.

We gleefully opened our Christmas Garden to our friends and family, as did many basement railroad barons in town.  We would stand by proudly as they soaked in the miniature scenes, which included a parade with a marching band, our own smaller house afire, and a fully lit scale model of our local A&P that my brother built for his drafting class in high school.

Then after January, it all came down and went back into boxes.  Just before the train boards went back up to their hooks on the ceiling, the landscape looked like it had been devastated by a bomb blast.  The tracks, grass matte and slot car track remained affixed to the board, but everything else was gone, save for the bare light bulbs poking up through the surface, their houses removed clean down to their foundations as if by a freak storm.

Then spring would arrive followed by summer, and we’d be diverted by baseball, Red Rover, and getting into fights up at the playground.  Aside from the occasional rainy Saturday when we would beg Dad to take us to the hobby shop, the trains were out of sight and out of mind.

But once school started, and the air took on that certain crispness, we could feel the adrenaline starting to build as train time drew near again!

Lee

[twhite]

Lee--

That's a TERRIFIC memoir--you really should submit it to MR for inclusion in their next year's December issue.  It's really worth publication. 

Tom

 

[wm3798]

 Thanks, Tom... I just had fun writing about it...  If they want to pick it up, they know where to find me!

Lee

[da_kraut]

 Thank you,

 that is a truly wonderful post.  Really enjoyed reading it for it took me down memory lane as well.

Frank

 

[lvanhen]

 to all of the above!!!!!

This is the kind of stuff that really helps get you into the Christmas Spirit!!

If it's not too early, and forgive my political incorrectnes"

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

[mobilman44]

Nice write-up!!!

I grew up in Chicago ('44-'67) and "the trains" were as much a part of Christmas as anything.  While most everyone I knew with "trains" had them up from Thanksgiving to New Year's, that was enough to give those of us destined to be life long model railroaders a start in the hobby.  For us "older folks" in the hobby, I would suggest that most of us got started due to that Holiday gift of Lionel, Marx, or an American Flyer trainset.  

By the way, I would give most anything to have pictures of my childhood trains and layout; you are very fortunate!

Mobilman44

[tcwright973]

Lee,

What an excellent story to share with us. It brought back memories of the early 40's when I was 5 or 6. A gentleman who lived across the street from us, a milkman as I recall, would put up a Christmas display of Lionel trains in a small bedroom. In the evenings and on Sunday afternoons, my friends and I would be allowed to sit and watch his trains run through a small village and mountains made of that old mountain paper with shiny sparkles all over it. This was where my love of trains began. As well as the window displays at Sear's and the other department stores in Pittsburgh.

Tom

[rrinker]

I DO have pictures, I just need to find a way to get them digital, they are mosty fading old Polaroids. My first exposure to model traisn was the Christmas I turned two, apparantly my parents felt I was now big enough not to wreck things. I stil have an 8mm silent movie showing me at two running trains around a loop under the tree - HO, Tyco 0-6-0 tank engine. My hand on the throttle, speeds a bit high.

Later on when we moved to a Larger house, now was the time of year we began setting things up. At first it was a simple 4x4 loop, plywood on sawhorses covered with green felt. A loop inside the houses at the middle was home to a Tyco trolley, the outside loop was for the 'regular' trains. A year or two later, my one of my Dad's Christmas presents was an Aurora Postage Stamp N scale set - the Lil Donkey switcher and train. Soon a 2x2 foot extension appeared, with a simple loop on N scale track with a single passing siding, the inner track going partway up a pier set with a bridge in the middle. This partially overhung the HO layout to provide a tunnel for the HO trains. I think we set itup this way for 2 years - after burning out each N scale turnout motor 3 times each, the N scale was packed away. The HO then expanded to a full 4x8, bolted together in the middle so we coud take it apart for storage. I distinctly remember the first year of the 4x8, I came down in the mornign before school, or perhaps it was a Saturday my Dad had to work, and tried to run a train, as I noticed he had finished the complete outer loop of track the night before. My train got halfway around and stalled. I poked and prodded around and found the insulated joiners and the extra feeders - I connected those and now I was runnign trains. I was probably about 6 at the time. Each year we added more and more stuff, the 'final' 4x8 had a large mountain in the corner with a track halfway up that ran a Lionel HO 'bumper car' back and forth, and a cable car ran from the summit down to the Old West town at the base (Kibri kits) where we parked the old time equipment (AHM Reno, Genoa, Bowker, and assorted cars from AHM and Tyco). The final extension added a narrow board around the edges of the layout plus a 2 foot extension behind the mountain to allow a loop of wider radius to run the AHM streamlined Hudson and passenger cars, and proved a yard to park things on. That was our last year of a temporary layout, my Dad passed away that spring.  I attempted to set somethign up that CHristmas, but couldn't manage the whole 4x8, and had problems getting a compelted loop on the old original 4x4 section. Later on I dug out the N scale, and bought a few new locos and cars and constructed a simple layout that worked fairly well and was allowed to keep up all year. Eventually as I gained more skill I build larger layouts with a 'proper' frame supporting the plywood, which I set up in my bedroom, first a 4x8 HO layout and finally a 3x6 N scale layout that was my last until after college.

At the same time, my grandfather had a simple 4x8 platform in the basement. Just 3 loops of track, no turnouts. The innermost one was home to another Tyco trolley, the middle loop held a Tri-Ang Rocket and cars (imported by ATT - not the phone company), and the outer loop was home to a Varney SW and train. Not as fun to run as ours at home, but it was never taken down. Even in summer if we asked nicely, my Grandfather would take off the plastic he kept over it to keep the dust off and let us run the trains.

                          --Randy

 

[MOPACnut]

 My contribution to promoting the hobby this year. 

I was up at 8am today so i could run the ho scale layout i set up in the depot museum here from 10am to 3pm. Today was my town's "Christmas opener", which happens on the 1st Saturday after Thanksgiving. Among other things it includes is a parade, and the turning on of the town christmas lights. Besides my model trains up front, there was kids crafts in the back plus meeting with Santa from noon til' 2.
   It's the 4th year i've done it. The first time i just had 4 tables to work with. The 2nd time was my trains on the layout i'm building for the museum in the ticket room which can run 3 trains, plus some set up by 2 other guys in the front, the 3rd time the other guy had trains up front again (including a christmas village), and i made an extension of the museum layout and attempted to have 6 going at once, but it was almost a disaster. Plauged by derailments, the "automatic interlocking" i set up messing up, and of course kid control. This year the other guy couldn't do it, so i got to use the 12 X 13' board he used before. After getting it assembled i made the plan. This time it would be 3 loops (dual mains and a "branch line") the branch crossed over the other 2 on a giant mountain i made (for the layout last year), then crossed the inside main at grade where the 2 mains split. Once again i tried my auto interlocking, this time it worked a little better (it consists of 2 Circuitron optical detectors connected to relays and signals, and whichever train gets there first gets the R of W, and the other stops automatically, then resumes when the other one clears). Allthough the sensors were still sensitive to light. Also had a yard area. Even squeezed in a small oval of N scale. In the center of this was the US-1 layout, which crossed the branch at grade and on  a bridge. Also had an Ertl Farm Country tractor dealership and my small collection of 1:64 scale tractors in the center.
  this time i had 2 new things. One was a sound equipped MP SD-40-2 (Broadway Ltd), the other was the collection of Tyco US-1 trucking slot car stuff i amassed earlier in the year (i know i know trains & trucks aren't suppose to mix). Complete with operating accessories like a crane that loads pipes and an auto carrier loader & unloader set (i also had my modified version of the auto loader which can load a Life Like bilevel autorack).
  I did my best to get everything running right but after the show started i had some problems, but got them fixed. It was a steady stream of kids and parents standing arround the layout from 10:30 til' about 2. And unlike last year i had no problems with them. A few (kids and adults) even assisted in rerailing something or giving a stalled truck a nudge ( i was in the center of a layout which was 6' wide on one side).  The things that got the most attention (other than the sight of 3 trains running at once)  were the sound equipped engine and the trucks, and the auto interlocking when it was running right. Often i had to leave the branch line off because of the crossing acting up or to demonstrate the US-1 accessories. And despite my best efforts the're were arround a half dozen truck/train accidents, which people found amusing (Operation Lifesaver work. What would happen was i'd be distracted by one of the main line trains or something and forget to stop the trucks at the crossing) And of course the're were some of the usual and unavoidable (dictated by Murphy's law) P. I. T. A. derailments, including a major one. while i was watching something else the 2 engines on the inside main train came uncoupled, came arround and wabashed the rear of it's own train. Which blocked the other main also.

 I brought enough stuff for several diffrent trains, but for the whole day it was the BLI SD-40 pulling a short string of autoracks, 2 MP P2K GP-7's pulling a good size drag freight, and a short train of "train set" cars pulled by 1 of 3 diffrent engines. I also had a New Bright G scale train set up arround the museum's christmas tree (it only got a couple chances to run). 

   Nonetheless it was fun. The're were probably arround (or at least) 100 visitors of all ages.  Even santa caught a break long enough to take a look. I asked him how many kids asked him for a train and he said about half of them did. Gee i wonder why? 
 It's not over either. As in previous years i'm leaving everything setup and i'll pick several days between now and Christmas to open the museum and run the trains.
 Photos of the layout are on the way (wish i had a digital camcorder).

[unca roggie]

My rich uncle had a movie camera, back in the good old days, a real rarity then...it captured me opening up my Christmas gift, being the most expensive Lionel steam engine ever produced.

That scratchy old movie was replayed for me, when I was almost an adult.  I know the look on my face just SCREAMED OUT: "DON'T ANYONE THINK OF EVEN TOUCHING THIS STUFF."

Quite embarrassing to see the unbridled GREED and SELFISHNESS that was so evident.  But, what a dream come true...and over the next few years, each birthday and Christmas meant the gifts of  "accessories" would be waiting for me to tear through the wrapping paper like a rabid wolverine...the white reefer that had a little guy who tossed milk vats out the door onto a platform...tiny black cows with plastic "hair" on the bottom, that would react to the JIGGLY effect, (which the push of a button would create) and cause the cows to move in the maze of a pen, and up a ramp into and back out of a stock car.

 

  This was BIG TIME special effects stuff, in the mid 50's, boy.  Today's kids would GUFFAW at such primitive junk, I'm sure.I wonder, now, how many kids ATE the little pills you were supposed to insert into the engine's smokestack, to get the little puffs of smoke--hoping to be able to blow out the smoke from their throats...I wasn't one of them, I'm happy to report.

 

  I had so much fun with that stuff for so many years, that I found it quite awful to read that such equipment was denegrated as "TINPLATE"--as if merely touching it rendered you unsophisticated and "unclean."  It was expensive, but still within reach of most children to own a small layout you could spread out on the carpet, and kept the interest of kids a LOT longer than the junky toys I watch today's little ones opening up, and cast aside, after 30 seconds. 

God bless the Lionel and American Flyer folks of those days when good American quality was put into the toys they sold to those of my generation.

[MOPACnut]

Ain't it the truth[V]. I think the're designed so kids will want it, but once they get it they only like it for a short time.

Anyway here's the photos:

Overview: 

Yard, and a model of the depot i made: 

Mountain crossing: 

 Rail and road

Automatic Interlocking: 

The layout i'm working on for the museum:

EDIT: It even got in our local paper (just a photo without caption though):

http://www.och-c.com/topstories/2008/120408/120408xmas.html